


Winter Wonderland

by kerlin



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not exactly hot chocolate," he'd said ruefully, "but I had to work with what we've got."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to ScaperRed for the beta

"You have had some fahrbot ideas in the past, Crichton, but this…" Aeryn stared at the object in her hand with utter disbelief and disdain.

"It’s a sled, Aeryn," Crichton replied, grinning like a fool in a way that almost forced Aeryn to respond with a twitching of her lips, an instinct she quickly tamped down on. "You’ll see. It’ll be fun."

"Fun." Not a Peackeeper word, that. Aeryn pressed her lips into a thin line and held the "sled" delicately, half-expecting it to come apart in her hands at any moment.

It was a relentlessly primitive piece of equipment. She really couldn’t understand why Crichton was so worked up about it. He had worked with the DRDs for the past few arns slowly curving the plasteel sheet upward, punching holes in the front and threading cable through it.

He’d attached hand rails to the side, bolting them in and then worrying excessively over "drag" on the bottom, smoothing the bolt ends and caulking in any minor imperfections that might have occurred. He’d questioned Pilot about wax, too, whatever that was, but had had to settle for superheating the bottom of the plasteel to create an incredibly smooth surface.

The entire crew had poked their heads in but only Aeryn had been driven to distraction by his endeavors. The others had simply shrugged it off as Crichton and his Erp-customs, but Aeryn had kept returning, arn after arn, to the maintenance bay to watch his progress.

Initially, she had put her fascination with his project down to lack of anything else to do. Moya was resting comfortably in orbit of an empty ice planet, for the moment seemingly out of the way of any harm. They had all decided to stay here for a few days and rest. Her Prowler was running at better than optimum levels for the first time in monens. Out of sheer boredom she had even poked around in Crichton’s module for a few microts before giving up all hope of understanding its primitive wiring system. But all to no avail. For better or for worse, staring at Crichton seemed to be the most interesting thing she had to do that afternoon.

And so here she was, standing in the maintenance bay holding the surprisingly heavy sled while John Crichton grinned at her. Aeryn decided it was time to state the obvious.

"I have no idea what I am supposed to do with this." She handed the sled back to him and he hefted its weight easily, setting it back on the worktable and absentmindedly patting the one-eyed DRD that had put the final touches on it a few microts ago. Still grinning.

"I have a surprise for you," he said, and somehow Aeryn knew the next move.

"A surprise?" She quirked her eyebrow up and bit on her lip, crossing her arms and shifting her weight backward. Oh yes, they’d played this game before.

"Yeah." John’s eyes flared in recognition and he moved in, close. His smile was a different quality now, a bewitching one. "Dress warmly and met me in the transport bay in half an arn."

Aeryn allowed just the tiniest hint of a smile to play on her lips before she turned on her heel and left the maintenance bay.

Precisely half an arn later she stood in the transport bay, dressed in winter survival gear she’d managed to find in Moya’s stores. She’d lived aboard ships her whole life, only going down to commerce planets for shore leave. And by no stretch of the imagination would the barren, icy planet they were currently orbiting be considered suitable for PK shore leave.

Fortunately for her, the instructions on the thermal gear had been typically explicit. She was able to piece together an ensemble out of various items and by a stroke of luck had even found a pair of waterproof boots that would fit around the thick socks she had on.

Aeryn felt more than faintly ridiculous and much too warm for her personal comfort. The outer layer actually still lay on her bed. She’d carry it to the transport bay and put it on in the transport pod. It was simply too hot for Sebacean physiology otherwise.

She arrived at the transport bay one microt early to find a pod prepped and ready to go and in considerably less of a good mood than she had been in the half arn before. She didn’t see any point to this exercise at all.

Crichton came down the stairs of the pod, similarly dressed. At the sight of Aeryn bundled up he made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort of laughter but seemed to think better of it halfway through. "Why, Ms. Sun, you look like an Eskimo."

"I don’t care what I look like, let’s just get this over with." Aeryn glared at him. He wasn’t sweating at all in his layers of clothing, and she took that as a personal insult.

Crichton held out his arm in a grand manner, gesturing for her to climb into the pod. She did so as quickly as possible, tucking her outer layer of coat into a corner and taking the pilot’s seat.

"Let me fly," Crichton asked, standing in front of her after he’d entered. "I know exactly what I’m looking for. It’ll be much faster this way…"

Aeryn hesitated a moment, tempted to say something about her lack of confidence in his piloting skills, but realized he probably already knew exactly what he would say and that the point was made anyway. She shifted into the copilot’s seat and he started the pre-flight sequence.

Crichton piloted the transport pod down to the planet and hovered over what seemed like an interminable number of random, snowy slopes before finding one that met his apparently exacting criteria. He landed at the bottom and practically leapt out of the transport pod in his excitement, running through the snowdrifts like a child on hearing that school had been cancelled for the day.

"Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous." He knelt down to pick up a handful of snow, letting it drift through his gloved fingers. "Pure powder. Man, I wish I’d had time for skis, too." He looked at Aeryn, who was painstakingly making her way across the snow toward him and thought quickly enough to suppress the laugh that bubbled to his lips. His fearless ex-PK, totally out of her depth at her first exposure to snow.

"Skis?" Aeryn asked tentatively, placing foot after foot carefully and not at all trusting a ground that was covered in several denches of shifting white stuff.

"Yeah. Something tells me you’d be ready for the black diamonds after your first run down the bunny slopes." The image of Aeryn screaming down the slopes was an alluring one, and he had no doubt that the pilot in her would love the sense of being barely in control of the uncontrollable.

"Crichton, I haven’t understood a single word out of your mouth since we landed," Aeryn said sourly, reaching him.

"Wait here," was his only reply as he bounded back to the transport pod.

Aeryn knelt down in the snow, curious despite herself. She stripped off a glove and touched it, fascinated by the texture. Cold, and yet wet, and it melted quickly, leaving her with nothing more than a few drops of water. The next handful she took was larger, and she had a sudden urge to taste it. The snow was clean and fresh on her tongue, and all too quickly gone.

Her next experiment was to pull her glove back on and see how well the snow bonded with itself. The top layers, she found, didn’t pack well but when she dug down a bit the snow was wetter and formed into balls easily. Experimentally, she made one about fist size, tossing it up in the air to test its heft.

A creak from the direction of the transporter pod told her that Crichton had retrieved his sled and was coming down the stairs with it. She watched him to place the sled down on the ground next to the pod, palm the control to lift the stairs back into the pod, and then turn toward her. Sudden mischief overtook her, and after a quick glance for targeting, she fired the snowball directly at Crichton’s chest.

Aeryn Sun had been a successful Prowler pilot because she had, from a very early age, possessed almost preternatural hand-eye coordination. The snowball exploded on Crichton’s ribcage and he let out a surprised grunt as white stuff sprayed into his face.

He looked up with a stunned expression to see Aeryn kneeling in the snow, an innocent smile playing with the edges of her lips, and hesitated only a half a microt before ducking into a roll, coming up with a snowball of his own.

It was a one-sided battle from the very beginning. Crichton had cycles of experience, but Aeryn’s better eyesight and higher level of physical control meant that while any distance remained between them, her snowballs were unerringly accurate in plastering his face and body with cold, wet snow. One or two of his snowballs reached their targets, but Aeryn shrugged them off and kept firing.

After about a hundred microts of losing, Crichton decided to take matters in his own hands and ran forward in a suicide charge on Aeryn’s position. With a roar, he tackled her, sending them both head over heels in the snow. He lost a glove in the process, half of Aeryn’s hair came out of its braid, and they landed with his weight solidly pinning her down.

"Gotcha," he said, eyes twinkling. Aeryn convulsed beneath him, trying to throw his greater weight off her, but only succeeded in sinking herself further into the snow. She settled for blowing wet hair out of her face and fixing him with a Peacekeeper glare. Crichton found himself thankful that there were so many layers of clothing between them.

"So you do," she replied, trying futilely to throw her weight into a roll. "Now get off me before we both freeze to death."

The temptation to lean down and kiss her nose, already slightly pink from the cold, was nearly overwhelming, but in the end Crichton acquiesced and stood up, offering his hand.

She took it and pulled him back down to the ground, leaving her standing and him with a mouthful of snow. Aeryn stood over him, smirking, as he sputtered. She decided it might be safest to shift his attention away quickly, before he dragged her down into the snow with him again. "So what do we do with this sled of yours?"

Crichton remembered the sled almost as an afterthought, and his giddiness returned. "C’mon, I’ll show you." He scooped up his missing glove as he stood up, tugging it back onto his hand. A few quick strides brought him to the sled and he grasped the cable, pulling it along after him. It slid easily across the powder as he tramped toward the hill they were at the foot of.

Aeryn followed, slowly getting accustomed to the movements of walking through snow. She found she had to lift her leg unnaturally high up to free it from her footprints. Crichton seemed to have no trouble with it, walking easily, but she found it a very odd way of moving.

They trudged up the side of the hill, perhaps a hundred and fifty metras before they reached a relatively flat area and Aeryn suddenly had an idea of just what using this sled entailed.

"Crichton, if you are going to do what I think you are - " She closed her eyes briefly as he walked out to the middle of the hill with the sled and positioned it so the curved end pointed downward.

"Officer Sun, are you afraid?" Somehow, he knew not only the right words to goad her into going along, but he said it in just the right singsong teasing tone.

Indignant, she stomped over to where he was standing. "What do I do?"

He gestured toward the front of the sled. "Have a seat. Bend your legs in front of you, but make sure you’re completely on the sled."

Cautiously, Aeryn settled herself on the sled. She tucked her legs under the curve and found that her hands fell naturally to the rail on the side and that the handholds were large enough for gloved hands to grasp easily.

Crichton settled in behind her, bringing his legs up on either side of hers, and Aeryn repressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. His chest pressed against his back, and his arms were on either side of hers, grasping the cable that was attached to the front. He shifted so that his right hand held both cables.

"You ready?" he breathed in her ear, his breath tickling the loose tendrils of hair. Aeryn looked down the hill to see the transport pod looking unnervingly small in the distance, nodded slightly, braced herself, and wished that Sebaceans had deities to pray in. At this moment, a guardian deity might be a very useful thing.

He pushed with his left hand, at the same time throwing his weight forward to move the sled. They edged closer to the drop-off, and for a moment they seemed suspended in the air as Crichton quickly brought his hand back to grasp the cable tightly.

"Here we go!" he yelled as their weight tipped them forward and they began to fly.

Aeryn let out an involuntary yelp as the sled careened down the slope in a way that made her think of zero-G maneuvers in her Prowler. But they weren’t in her Prowler, they were planetside, going at impossibly fast speeds with only thin plasteel separating them from the ground. Panic clawed at her throat, and she gripped the rails as tightly as possible.

And then Crichton let out a yell of his own, an enthusiastic, joyful "Yeehaw!" and Aeryn found herself caught up in the moment. The wind was whipping around them and she’d completely lost feeling in her cheeks, but it was incredibly exhilarating. Adrenaline pumped through her and she had the briefly fahrbot wish to go even faster.

Crichton tightened his grip around her as they hit a bump and were briefly, terrifyingly airborne, and then they came down again with a thud that nearly knocked the wind out of Aeryn. When she recovered her breath, she began to laugh, breathing in deep gulps of the crisp air. Crichton started to laugh with her, and she could feel the rumbling in his chest even through the layers of clothing, though whatever noise he was making was torn away by the wind.

All too quickly they slowed down and then came to a gentle halt. Aeryn wasn’t sure she could move after her death grip on the sled’s rails, but Crichton stood first and offered his arm. Grasping his wrist she pulled herself up and felt blood return to her cramped legs, almost falling at first but then gaining her balance.

"That, Officer Sun, was fun." He didn’t let go of her arm, sliding his hand down to join with her hand, and his smile poured out of his eyes. Aeryn returned it in an open, uninhibited way that made her feel like they were rushing down the hill again.

"I’m not quite sure I grasped the entire concept, Commander Crichton." She tried hard to keep her tone serious, but the joy kept seeping through. "Flirting," Crichton had called this once, and she’d had no prior frame of reference for the word except perhaps for the phrase "flirting with disaster." This wasn’t disaster; this was something that filled her with energy and life, and made her feel as if she would never stop smiling. For a time, she had completely forgotten that they were still hunted, and a hundred other things she was sure she should be worrying about.

"We’ll just have to try again, shall we?" Crichton tugged at the cable on the sled and it glided along behind him as he headed back toward the hill. He still hadn’t let go of her hand.

They had sledded until sunset touched the horizon, and then Crichton had managed to hit Aeryn with a few snowballs when she wasn’t paying attention. That had required retaliation, and they had hefted snow at each other until they were both completely breathless - as if the afternoon hadn’t already been physically taxing enough, with walking up the hill again and again.

But it was a good, contented exhaustion. Crichton had won the battle again by tackling Aeryn, and this time had given in to the compulsion to lean the extra dench and mold his lips to hers. He had tasted of snow, and his lips had been cool at first but they’d quickly warmed up. The kiss had only lasted a few heartbeats, and neither of them had spoken of it, but somehow it seemed a fitting end to the day. While the tension and the need had been there, omnipresent as always, they both seemed to recognize that for now, the simplicity of the moment was what made it special.

Crichton had kicked Chiana out of the galley and heated up two mugs of an herbal drink, sitting across the table from Aeryn and cradling the heat in his numb hands. ("It’s not exactly hot chocolate," he’d said ruefully, "but I had to work with what we’ve got.") They’d both shed their thermal wear but were still considerably chilled, though Aeryn was a great deal more comfortable with a lower body temperature than Crichton was.

"You did this a lot on Earth, sledding?" Aeryn blew slightly on the surface of the drink and tried to remember a time she’d felt so relaxed.

Crichton shook his head wistfully. "Not for a long time. It’s something kids do. Living down south, we hardly ever had enough snow to. Usually we got to when we visited cousins up north. One year - cycle, sorry - Dad was stationed in Colorado. That was great. My first real winter, start to finish. And the storms meant he wasn’t flying as much as he was down south. Mostly, he was supervising. He hated it - but it meant he was home more often. He used to take us out every weekend for some kind of winter sport. Skiing, ice skating, sledding." He gave Aeryn a sly sideward glance. "The Peacekeepers would love ice hockey."

Aeryn gave him a stern look. She had no idea what ice hockey was, but from his tone of voice he’d been making a jab at Peacekeepers, and for posterity’s sake she couldn’t let that stand. "When you go back, perhaps you should make time to sled more often."

"Yeah…" Crichton leaned back in the chair and took another sip. His eyes fell on Aeryn, dark hair loose and wet, cheeks pink and slightly windburned, beautiful eyes looking back at him over the edge of the mug, and; he remembered tasting snow on her lips. And Earth seemed very, very far away.


End file.
